The Property Rights Project at William & Mary Law School announces that Professor James E. Krier, Earl Warren DeLano Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School, is the 2012 recipient of the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize. Professor Krier will accept his award during the Ninth Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, October 11-12, at William & Mary Law School.

“Professor Krier is an outstanding choice for the Brigham-Kanner Prize,” said Lynda Butler, Chancellor Professor of Law and Director of the Property Rights Project. “He has been a leading property scholar for decades and is known to many a law student and professor for his groundbreaking casebook on Property. What makes Jim’s scholarship special is his ability to bring so many different disciplinary perspectives to bear on a property issue or problem, and he always does so in an engaging and thought-provoking way.”

Krier teaches courses on property, trusts and estates, behavioral law and economics, and pollution policy. His research interests are primarily in the fields of property and law and economics, and he is the author or coauthor of several books, including Environmental Law and Policy, Pollution and Policy, and Property (7th edition). Krier's most recent articles have been published in Harvard Law Review, Supreme Court Economic Review, UCLA Law Review, and Cornell Law Review. A professor of law at UCLA and Stanford before joining the Michigan Law faculty in 1983, he has been a visiting professor at both Harvard University Law School and Cardozo School of Law.

University of Arizona Law School Professor Carol Rose, who received the Brigham-Kanner Prize in 2010, noted that Krier has long made significant contributions to property law jurisprudence. “Jim Krier has been one of the most creative property scholars in the United States for well over three decades,” Rose said. “His work on property approaches to environmental problems has been so far ahead of the curve that other scholars have tended to realize only belatedly that he was there first. His casebook Property has been a trailblazer in bringing a modern interdisciplinary approach to the teaching of property, and it has made a singular contribution to the revitalization of property scholarship. I frankly do not know where my own scholarship would have been without his work leading the way. He certainly deserved this award a long time before me, and I am absolutely delighted to see that he is this year's recipient.”

Alan Ackerman, a prominent eminent domain attorney, echoed Butler’s and Rose’s enthusiasm, describing Professor Krier as an “outstanding scholar” who has studied the “evolution of American property rights. Professor Krier has recognized that property rights are intrinsic in our liberty and that the study of property is a study of economics and societal action,” Ackerman said.

Krier joins an illustrious list of previous recipients of the Brigham-Kanner Prize, including Professor Frank I. Michelman of Harvard Law School (2004), Professor Richard A. Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School (2005), Professor James W. Ely, Jr., of Vanderbilt Law School (2006), Professor Margaret Jane Radin of the University of Michigan Law School (2007), Professor Robert C. Ellickson of Yale Law School (2008), Professor Richard E. Pipes of Harvard University (2009), Professor Carol M. Rose, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law (2010), and most recently Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (2011), who accepted her award during the Conference’s inaugural year abroad in Beijing, China.

Both the conference and the prize are named in recognition of Toby Prince Brigham and Gideon Kanner for their ongoing private property rights work, their efforts to advance the constitutional protection of property, and their accomplishments in preserving the important role that private property plays in protecting individual and civil rights.